Paper detail

Analytic models for density of a ground-state spinor condensate

We demonstrate that the ground state of a trapped spin-1 and spin-2 spinor ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) can be well approximated by a single decoupled Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation. Useful analytic models for the ground-state densities of ferromagnetic BECs are obtained from the Thomas-Fermi approximation (TFA) to this decoupled equation. Similarly, for the ground states of spin-1 anti-ferromagnetic and spin-2 anti-ferromagnetic and cyclic BECs, some of the spin component densities are zero which reduces the coupled GP equation to a simple reduced form. Analytic models for ground state densities are also obtained for anti-ferromagnetic and cyclic BECs from the TFA to the respective reduced GP equations. The analytic densities are illustrated and compared with the full numerical solution of the GP equation with realistic experimental parameters.